Significance of nature in Celtic religion

Money, power and material values took rote as the three whales of today’s life. People are more and more involved into the endless competition time. They try to earn more, try to see more, try to be more, but this advantage of modern life also has negative influence on our life quality. We already do not have or do not want to have time for our family, live conversation (not using any of social networks, internet or even the phone) or walk in the nature. Growing number of activities forwarded to virtual space has deepen the distance between people and nature. Ability to have some benefit from it (for example trees for the wood, water for the alcohol production and so on) is the only relation that is left. What is worse – we not only use it, but devastate hundreds of forests, contaminate lakes and rivers, burn trees and pollute the weather.

But not all the time the situation was this bad. In the past, people tend to appreciate and care about the nature. An ethno linguistic group of tribal societies – Celts – is always given as an example how to live in harmony with nature.

Celtics did believe that there is the “Otherworld”, which was represented as a domain of their deities or supernatural beings. They even considered this “Otherworld” as their heaven or hell. Inhabitants of this place were hidden from the eyes of simple mortal people. Strong magician powers regulated that this order should be obligatory for everyone. Those creatures of the “Otherworld” were kept in various places like islands, dunes, dun-hills, forests, rivers and so on. Some parts of this magical world were visible for only short time period at night and vanished in the morning.

It is also a quite often thing that in Celtic myths the earth and land were represented as feminine entitities such as the goddess or they were personified to the land or the earth.